


A Long Day

by CuteSkirmishSorcerer



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 17:07:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22499563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuteSkirmishSorcerer/pseuds/CuteSkirmishSorcerer
Summary: It's a long time after the events of the show, but Hamid still has a promise to keep.Spoilers up to Ancient Rome (and possibly beyond)
Comments: 50
Kudos: 216





	A Long Day

Riz didn't resent supervising training for the younger cohort like some of his contemporaries did. He could see the unrestrained joy in the faces as they flipped and tumbled about the yard. The sun was already setting over the hill maybe it wouldn't hurt anyone to spend another ten minutes wearing themselves out, but it was probably time to get them all inside.

He shivered, and pulled his cloak slightly tighter. Autumn was giving way to winter and the wind was definitely colder today than it had been. “Time for dinner!” He shouted, to a chorus of groans and sighs, so he started shooing them all inside. He stopped mid gesture when he noticed something strange. A pale shimmer in the air, colours that shouldn't be there. He waved the kids onward and placing one hand on a dagger at his hip he approached the anomaly cautiously.

The shimmer suddenly widened and burst into a brilliant glow, a cascading aura of colours swept outwards from it but faded quickly. Riz backed up again and glancing backwards saw a bunch of his charges watching from the doorway. He urged them to stay put and started circling the weird phenomenon; trying to work out what was going on. It looked like a hole in reality, a rip or a tear in the air itself just floating a little of the ground. He looked into it but there was nothing there but a pale chromatic glow, it had a hypnotic otherworldly quality and he stood staring into it, until the moment was broken when he caught a hint of movement inside.

A figure stepped out, and the whole rift vanished immediately with nothing more than a residual glow. At first Riz thought the figure was a child, but then he turned round and Riz saw that he was definitely an adult, just extremely short - he couldn't have been much over 3 feet tall - with brown skin and neat dark hair, with just a hint of grey at the temples. His clothing was an entirely unfamiliar style and his eyes and ears gave away that this was not a human. Riz had been told about halflings and gnomes and it wasn't hard to figure out that this mysterious person must be one or the other. There was something else even more strange about him too; a metallic quality to his skin, and some sort of skin condition seemed to be showing just at the edge of his neckline and his sleeves, all of which made him somehow even further from Human that Riz had expected such a person to be.

He started to speak, a language Riz didn't recognise, and his confusion must have shown on his face as the stranger switched what he was speaking more than once, but with no success. His arms and voice started to move through the obvious motions of spell-casting and Riz tensed and grabbed at the hilt of one of his daggers almost instinctively. The stranger completed his spell, to no obvious external effect, but stepped back and put up his hands in a non-threatening gesture.

“I'm terribly sorry, I didn't mean to startle anyone.” The stranger was finally comprehensible. “It's hard to be too precise with your arrival exactly. I um... I'm here to see errr... Sasha. I brought her a present!” His voice was high pitched and uncertain. Riz relaxed. This was certainly the most bizarre visitor Riz had encountered, but it wasn't too unusual for people to come from far and wide to see the boss.

“Alright. You got any weapons on you?”

The stranger shook his head, with a slight smile on his face. Riz realised it was perhaps a stupid question to ask a spell-caster, but it still did no harm to follow the rules.

“I gotta search you.”

“Oh um, the present! It's a dagger! I just forgot.” The stranger pulled a dagger, clipped into a sheath from an inside pocket and proffered it to Riz, hilt first. “Sorry.”

He sounded genuine, thought it wasn't easy to tell. Riz grabbed the offered dagger and gave him a quick pat down, feeling a little awkward at the size difference, but found nothing.

“Follow me.” He started walking inside and waved at the remaining kids to scatter. They did, most of them a little freaked out by the weirdness of the stranger. A few hid behind corners or tables, peeking out to see if they could get a closer look.

Riz led the stranger to the upstairs sitting room, where he knew Sasha would be sitting by the fire. He noticed the stranger adjust his outfit and smooth his hair quickly as they entered. The boss was older now, and complained about aching joints occasionally, but Riz knew she was still just as sharp as ever and would know better than anyone if this new arrival presented a threat. He wasn't prepared for Sasha to break into a huge smile as she saw the visitor.

“Alright 'amid.”

“Alright Sasha.”

The stranger was beaming too, and Riz could see tears in his eyes. Riz thought he saw some sort of movement under the clothing on the strangers back, but it stopped nearly immediately and Riz dismissed it as a trick of the light.

*******

Hamid was aware of that neither he nor Sasha were the young people who had known each other so long ago. He was an old man now, heavier and wider than he'd been as an adventuring adolescent, with too many grey hairs and a few extra scars. Not to mention the even more dramatic changes underneath. They'd only travelled together a few weeks, and decades and passed (for both of them) since then. But seeing her again was still the most wonderful feeling he could imagine.

Sasha looked so different than he remembered as well. Her faced lined and wrinkled, but with a confidence that hadn't been there before. Her hair had faded entirely to grey but still with the shock of white on one side of her head. She looked healthy though, and no additional scars that he couldn't place – a relief given the frequency with which she'd picked them up when they were adventuring together.

They stood there, smiling at each other. He was at a loss for words. Even through all the research that had gone in to getting him here he was never quite sure it would work. And always that doubt gnawed at the back of his mind that Sasha wouldn't recognise him or wouldn't be pleased to see him for some reason. He could feel his wings struggling to come out with his relief and joy, but he kept them as tightly furled as he could under his jacket.

“What you doin' ere?”

“Oh, ermmm,” It was hard to put his thoughts in order, to say everything he wanted to say. Focus, focus. He swallowed. “I told you once that we didn't leave people behind. I promised Azu...” He choked back a sob, he knew tears were running down his face, but it was hard to care. “I promised we'd find you. You and Grizzop...”. He trailed off. He'd known where to find Sasha, but in all of his investigations, there'd never been a sign of the Goblin they'd both known. "I don't suppose you know, what... happened to him?"

Sasha let out a deep breath he didn't realise she'd been holding. “We arrived together, but 'e... didn't make it. He saved me, but...”

Hamid interrupted, seeing how difficult it was for her to talk about “That's ok. You don't have to say more." He wiped away his tears, "Unless you want to, I mean. I know it's a lot to process all at once. I can't stay too long, but err... hopefully long enough to catch up.” He smiled, feeling a little awkward, but was quickly able to relax again when Sasha smiled back.

“I errmmm... heh.” He shrugged. “When I started working on this I was gonna offer to take you back with me. Oh no no no” he reacted to her starting to disagree “I know you wouldn't want to now. It's ermmm, it's easier to *see* back here than travel. A lot easier. I've been able to watch a bit of what you've done here, what you've built. I'm so impressed Sasha. I'm um.. proud of you. And I know the others would be too.”

“Cheers mate” she smiled again.

*******

Riz couldn't remember a time when he'd seen Sasha choked up with emotion. It was a strange experience and he felt a bit awkward being in the room, even if he couldn't understand most of what had been said. Sasha hadn't said much about the friends she'd had before the school, before Rome, but he knew enough to work out who this was. He wanted to leave but he was still holding the dagger that this 'Amid' had given him. He caught his eye with a small gesture.

The halfling exclaimed, seeming surprised, and took the dagger from him, taking it out of the sheath to present to Sasha. Riz saw an engraving on the hilt, which he initially mistook for numerals of some kind, but as it was shown to Sasha he could make out the characters LOL on one side of the hilt, and OMG on the other. At gesturing from her guest Sasha was coaxed into throwing it at a target on the wall. It struck dead centre, and Riz whistled appreciatively at the demonstration of the skills she still possessed. Half a second later the dagger blinked out of existence, but reappeared in the sheath that Sasha had been handed. She picked it up again and gripped the hilt, smiling broadly.

The two of them hugged, and Riz decided to take the opportunity to withdraw, drifting silently from the room as he'd been taught. He heard the visitor start talking again, the words still unfamiliar, but the tone clearly of a person launching into a long story. Riz smiled, happy that Sasha had another old friend for company, and went back downstairs to check on the kids.

**Author's Note:**

> Perhaps it is slightly strange to write a piece of fic for a work you are already involved in, but as is probably clear we're a long way from canon here. The RQGRSB discord server bullied me into making a Hamid playlist and then I gave myself feels with it, like a fool, and couldn't get this idea out of my head. I haven't cleared this with anyone else in the company, so please don't take any implication about what might or could happen. This is just a potential epilogue that I, personally, would enjoy for Hamid.
> 
> Many thanks to @Miri1984 for beta-reading and advice.
> 
> Edit: Oh and [this](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/79yRHLBcTcdWmJFRpMEVZq?si=R2Ji-QVrRtmSFQGz9l8cww) is the playlist I made that made me want to write this fic. It should be obvious which song in particular.


End file.
